


Featherlight

by EliMorgan



Series: Shots and Shorts [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Baby theft?, Crossover, Family, Roll-A-Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 19:47:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15493350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EliMorgan/pseuds/EliMorgan
Summary: Natasha and Clint adopt a baby somewhat unconventionally.





	Featherlight

**Author's Note:**

> **I do not own the works made use of herein, none of the Harry Potter/Marvel universe features or characters belong to me. I make no money from this work.**
> 
> Written for July's Roll-A-Drabble in the Marvelously Magical Fanfiction Facebook Group: I was given Harry Potter and Natasha Romanov, with 'Family' as a trope...
> 
> I've fiddled with the timelines so that the events of Harry Potter occur twenty years later than originally, so that when Natasha goes to work at Stark Industries Harry would be ten. I'm fuzzy on the Avengers timeline, but that's how I've done it.   
> Somewhat OOC, I guess?  
> Enjoy!

Natasha was hiding behind a bin, persuading herself that she was sane. She’d notice if she wasn’t. It was the sort of thing one noticed in spies, especially ones as valued as Natasha. Even if her handlers hadn’t, Clint would have.

But what other explanation was there? The lady who’d been a cat ten minutes ago still stood in the street, chattering to a man in some sort of star-spangled muumuu. And the giant still existed, too. Weeping beside his flying motorcycle.

_Flying motorcycle._

She’d been sent here on a simple mission. Observe, interrogate, extract. She had the papers in her pocket, the traitor was sleeping off the drugs in his bed, and she’d been on her way to extraction when the cat had turned into a lady.

Naturally, she couldn’t have left after that.

She loathed suburbs. Two days she’d watched this house, and all the ones surrounding it. Three of the fathers were sleeping with the woman in number twelve. The family in number six threatened their child with the orphanage on a daily basis. Number four was roundly hated; the man fat and cruel, the woman thin and gossipy. Their new baby was so fat he could be rolled to the shop and back, not that they seemed to notice. The whole place was rotten and cold, and knowing that at the end of the mission she’d never have to return had been the one shining light in the entire experience.

And now she was stuck.

What were they saying, anyway? Someone had died. An orphan? She heard ‘defeated’. Odd subjects for a wizard and Catwoman to discuss in the middle of the night in Surrey.

The giant didn’t speak much, too busy crying, but he was carrying a bundle of blankets less than the size of his hand. It writhed and burbled, the thin sounds travelling to Natasha easily enough for her to discern that it was a child.

Ignoring her dubious mental state, she called Clint. He was the only person she’d trust to help her with… whatever this was. It might not be a mission, but the whole scenario was too close to some of the folk-tales she remembered from her youth, and children _never_ came out well in Russian folk tales.

“‘Lo, Nat,” Clint said through a mouthful of food.

Her voice low, she rattled off the facts. “I am watching a wizard, a cat who turned into a woman and a giant haggle over a baby.”

There was a pause and a spluttering before Clint came back, his voice high-pitched. “ _What_?”

“I know.” She looked again - the wizard was heading up the path, now tucking something into the blanket. “They’re finished. The wizard has put the baby on a doorstep, and now the giant is flying off-”

“ _Flying_ \- Nat, are you alright?”

Natasha brought out the miniscule camera SHIELD had given her. She snapped a few shots of the giant: climbing onto his motorbike, taking-off, and as he flew into the clouds. The wizard warranted a few, too, as the obvious leader. Then, finally, she snapped one of Catwoman, who transformed back into a cat and stalked away.

“They’re gone now,” Nat muttered while Clint floundered. The streetlights re-lit themselves, and she stood. “Meet me at 4, Privet Drive. Quickly.”

* * *

 

There was a letter – one she promptly tore up, for she’d already decided it wouldn’t be needed, not when they talked about him like… _that._

Subduing her rage, Natasha glanced at the child. She was sure she should do something with it. Leaving him on the floor didn’t seem _right_ , but, what could she actually do?

He was a precious looking child, if you ignored the great gash on his forehead. Black hair; delicate, pale skin. He was larger than she expected an infant to be - but then she’d never seen one up close, so what did she know?  

Should she pick it up? Rock it? She'd seen mothers over the years and they tended to sort of jiggle their wards, as if it were a stubborn lock. It didn't look difficult, but Natasha was intimately acquainted with how breakable children were and didn't want to inadvertently cause the child harm.

Realising that it must be cold - what sort of person left a child outside, on the floor, at midnight, anyway? - she took what seemed the most logical route: sitting cross legged on the grass and pulling him into her arms, trying not to notice how sweet it was when he grizzled in its sleep, and how her arms seemed perfectly shaped to hold him.

The babe snuggled into her chest. She ignored the clenching there. It might have been a maternal impulse, but it was more likely to be heartburn. With her history, the idea that she felt _motherly_ was ridiculous.

Eventually, she heard Clint approaching. He was on foot, barely making a noise as he slipped through the gate and up to where she sat. She didn’t look up, focusing on the child; his tiny button nose had caught her eyes, she thought it was rather… cute? Whatever word described something that could cause a clenching feeling near her heart and a near-irresistible need to poke it and smile.

“Cute kid,” Clint confirmed for her, leaning over her shoulder in that way she hated.

“His name is Harry Potter,” she said, giving in to her urge to stroke his nose. His skin was feather soft and he absently nuzzled into her hand. At that, what little was left of her heart broke, and she thought of the coldness of the people who lived in this house, and the strangers who'd left him on a doorstep in the frigid November air to meet an uncertain fate. If she had any empathy, she felt it then, and she stood with him in her arms, handing him to Clint with no little regret. “And you're taking him home.”

"What-" Clint looked in her eyes and blinked. "Oh. Okay. Guess I'm taking him home."


End file.
